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Defining the small cell market opportunity is a lot more complex than many industry commentators would have people believe, according to Ovum. With the likes of Vodafone already announcing next year’s small cell plans, all signs...

Defining the small cell market opportunity is a lot more complex than many industry commentators would have people believe, according to Ovum. With the likes of Vodafone already announcing next year’s small cell plans, all signs point to this market as a growing opportunity for infrastructure vendors, the research firm says.

However, Ovum warns that current assessments ignore key factors, such as deployments using real-estate assets mobile operators aren’t accustomed to and whether the market can support the many vendors pursuing small cell.

In two new small cell reports Ovum explains that although no single definition of the small cell market fits all vendors, defining the market based on small cell applications rather than technology provides the best segmentation.

Ovum also insists that Wi-Fi should be considered a small cell as infrastructure vendors are starting to incorporate Wi-Fi support into their overall heterogeneous network (HetNet) strategies. This interest will see carrier Wi-Fi gear shipments grow by 84% in 2012 and continue double-digit growth to 2017, it says.

“The majority of interest in the small cell market today is surrounding the capacity gains of small cells being deployed in a heterogeneous network (HetNet),” said Daryl Schoolar, principal analyst in Ovum’s Network Infrastructure Telecoms team. “The reasons for this are very clear: as mobile traffic continues to grow, the economics of deploying more macrocells to meet this traffic growth do not add up long term. Small cells promise to provide much-needed capacity injections at a lower cost.”